<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Duty by Bazylia_de_Grean</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180524">Duty</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/pseuds/Bazylia_de_Grean'>Bazylia_de_Grean</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2009-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2009-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:47:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,765</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/pseuds/Bazylia_de_Grean</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You have no heart, Adare told him once, only reason and conscience. Yet if he has no heart, then why does his chest feel heavy with an invisible burden every time he is thinking of their errors?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Duty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="Baz">Evening wind is whistling over the plains, rustling the grass; a whispering sea of molten gold and amber, under a burning sky. In the distance, a lone kath hound is howling.</p>
<p class="Baz">He takes in a breath, slowly, savouring the fresh scent of the wind; a moment of peace, one of only a few, each of them so precious because of their rarity. His footsteps make almost no sound as he ventures deeper out into the plains, a failed attempt at an escape he is dreaming of now more and more often. Further and further, but no, not too far away, for he has to be back at Khoonda by night.</p>
<p class="Baz">Midnight, he tells his conscience, let it for once be midnight. He is craving solitude, and for that fragile perfection which can be found out on the planes still, even after everything the land has suffered from what seemed a constant wave of destruction: Revan, who took so many into space, none of whom returned; Malak and his troops and assassins; Mandalorian raiders, roaming the once safe grasslands for long years after the war. Yet even after that all, or maybe because of it, or maybe contrary to it, there is still peace.</p>
<p class="Baz">Peace in the wind ruffling the remains of his greying hair, promising rest. Eternal rest, his mind prompts him, yes, eternal rest soon. Soon, but not soon enough.</p>
<p class="Baz">First stars are climbing up into the sky, cool, almost painfully bright against its dark velvet. They are almost like Adare’s eyes: they, too, are painfully bright, painfully bright with life in her exhausted, pale face; once she might have been quite pretty, but he does not remember.</p>
<p class="Baz">Strange, how after everything he is still unable to think of her using her name; it seems inappropriate, out of place. She is a leader, not a woman; a function, not a name.</p>
<p class="Baz">He looks up into the sky, watching the stars. The young one is somewhere out there; their most splendid success, surpassed only by Revan, their most painful mistake, and now their last, desperate hope. How many mistakes did they allow, how many wrong decisions?</p>
<p class="Baz">You have no heart, Adare told him once, only reason and conscience. Yet if he has no heart, then why does his chest feel heavy with an invisible burden every time he is thinking of their errors? Remorse, guilt, yes, but there is more. Compassion, for the young one, and fear. Young one... Ah, no longer a young one. His apprentice once, then a brilliant Knight, then a rebellious general under Revan’s command, now only a shadow of the former glory, a ‘wound in the Force’... Have they ever considered what it must have been like, to suddenly lose the Force? Like losing sight and hearing and touch, all at once, and being separated from a constantly present source of internal strength. The lost young one – she will always remain a child for him – lonely, somewhere out there, among cold merciless stars; a child who had to grow up too quickly, something he knows well himself and has always silently wished it would not happen to any of his students, least of all to that one; so bright, so hopeful, with such passion for life...</p>
<p class="Baz">“Forgive me, child,” he whispers to the sky, knowing that his words will not reach the ears they should, that they will reach no one, but it diminishes his burden all the same, if only a tiniest bit.</p>
<p class="Baz">For a moment he wonders if the others regret that decision, too. Where are they, are they even alive? Probably yes, though he is not sure anymore if he would feel their passing in the Force; once friends for life, almost like one mind, now scattered across the galaxy, more distant every day... Does he really mean it, when he thinks ‘we’? Is there still a ‘we’? Was there ever, truly? He knows, remembers it was, but it is becoming difficult to believe that.</p>
<p class="Baz">His thoughts turn from his friends to another; once his fellow Jedi, his friend, his-... One who could always understand, yet whom he was never able to understand fully, but offered acceptance anyway, acceptance, and much more, knowing she would not tell him that she needed him. And knowing that she needed him anyway; knowing it by the glimpse in her eyes, by half a smile she sometimes graced him with. Knowing it by her gasping breaths and closed eyes, by the way her fingers clutched at his hand. Knowing it by the fierceness of her voice when she was urging him to go with her, by the look of disgust in her eyes when he declined, by the way she left without a goodbye next morning. Knowing it by sensing her presence here on the planet, her signature in the Force shadowy and barely tangible, and because she did not come, avoiding meeting him again. A few days ago he felt her very close, just behind a wall, in the adjoining room, but he did not move from Adare’s side, listening to the Exile. That was his place; this is his place now: by her side.</p>
<p class="Baz">Wind takes his deep sigh, and with the wind he slowly wanders back, the lights of Khoonda twinkling in the distance. They should make him feel like returning home; they do not. He never had a real home, at least not one he can remember; the Enclave had been his home for years, but now it is only a ghost of the past, burned down and turned to ashes. He no longer has a place he can pretend is home, and no place in the universe other than this planet, the planet he swore never to leave, and to protect with his life; something for which Dantooine sometimes – though very, very seldom – repays him: when he is out in the grasslands and the stars are rising, there are rare times it feels like the right place to be, the last place that still welcomes him.</p><hr/>
<p class="Baz"> </p>
<p class="Baz">He slips into the building noiselessly, only to find her waiting in his room.</p>
<p class="Baz">“You’re late.” She looks at him with dimmed, tired eyes .</p>
<p class="Baz">“Apologies.”</p>
<p class="Baz">She sighs, but does not respond. He is thankful for her silence.</p>
<p class="Baz">“Don’t go anywhere tomorrow.” She does not ask, but he has been through this before. She never asks, she never pleads, she just speaks, commands or suggests, and looks at him with her dimmed eyes – as they always are in the night; during daytime her eyes are sharp and bright, starlike – and he knows he has to listen.</p>
<p class="Baz">Her gaze reluctantly moves away from his face. Before she turns to leave, he comes closer and kisses the corner of her lips gently. He can feel she wishes for more, but she does not ask him to stay with her tonight, and he is glad; he needs solitude.</p>
<p class="Baz">“Sleep well, Terena.” He manages to call her by name, and the tiny smile appearing on her lips assures him it was worth the effort.</p>
<p class="Baz">“Sleep well, Lamar.”</p>
<p class="Baz">He watches as she walks out of the room, then collapses onto a chair.</p>
<p class="Baz">She never uses his given name. Somehow, it fits; his name does not suit him anymore, one syllable, sharp, cutting, like a blade of a lightsaber. He is no longer like a blade; the crystal of his will is slowly burning out.</p>
<p class="Baz">The yearning is there again, yearning to leave the planet that took his life, to leave and never come back. He could do it, this night; he could have done it any night, and no one would have stopped him, and yet he stays. A Jedi’s life is duty, and his duty is here.</p>
<p class="Baz">Once his duty was to bring up Force-gifted children, to teach them, to help them grow, to help the people of Dantooine with his counsel and the work of his hands, to protect these people and to ensure their safety; now his duty is still to protect people of Dantooine, to help them preserve the planet, to help them survive. That is why he stands by Adare: because she is the leader, the chain that keeps the planet together, because she unites people, because she takes care of the planet’s safety. It is his duty to support her.</p>
<p class="Baz">She never asks for help and always keeps her head up proudly, but he knows. Her burden is heavy, and in the night, when she is alone, she is longing for a friend who would listen, or just be near. So he gives her all she needs: support and counsel, friendship, strength and safety, and sometimes, although it requires great exertion of self-control, he offers tenderness and even passion. She does not need him to pretend love; she knows he cannot offer that much, and he does not strive to offer. Her words were true: he has no heart, only conscience, which reminds him of duty.</p>
<p class="Baz">So he stands by her, because of his conscience, and not because of his heart, which is dry and withered by now. But there is one more reason, a reason which makes him wish he could at least try to offer more, and at the same time making him unable to do that. Because she reminds him too much of his loss, because she is strong and proud and unyielding, ready to give up everything she has for the truths she believes in, and in that he sees in her a reflection of Kreia. And all he can do is mind his duty, because otherwise he would betray one of them, and he feels he is betraying them both anyway: Kreia, because he was not able to stop her, to reason with her, or at least to accept her decision to leave, and because he still condemns her for her turning, and Adare, because she has almost everything Kreia once had, and she is a woman brave and worth of admiration, but she is not Kreia.</p>
<p class="Baz">He has tried to live a Jedi’s life: no attachment, because even with Kreia his duty to the Order always came first, no possession, because he let go of his students, and then of his heart, friendship and love alike; but there is no serenity and no peace, and he finally understands that a Jedi’s life is endless striving, an endeavour for someone else’s peace and serenity, and that the price for that is life. It is his duty to pay, but his heart, almost dead by now, is still trying to convince him he is paying willingly.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>